Weekly Worker 616 Thursday March 16 2006 Subscribe to the Weekly Worker

Tipton trio’s tortuous trip

Jim Gilbert reviews Michael Winterbottom's The road to Guantánamo (Channel 4, March 9)

Michael Winterbottom (In this world; 24-hour party people; Welcome to Sarajevo), in his now masterly fashion, brings home to viewers of his (and Mat Whitecross’s) latest film, The road to Guantánamo, some of the injustices committed by the criminal US government on stolen Cuban soil.

The film, which won the Silver Bear prize for direction at the Berlin International Festival in February, is a fictionalised account using actors. However, the three young men at the centre of the story take part in linking sequences, giving some of their thoughts and feelings at the time of the events shown.

As we all know, following the 9/11 al-Qa’eda attacks the US launched war against Afghanistan’s Taliban clerical fascists. But in amongst the Taliban ‘fighters’ were four young men from Tipton, West Midlands, caught in the round-up during the Taliban surrender to forces of the Northern Alliance.

Asif Iqbal (Arfan Usman) goes to Pakistan in late 2001 to get married, inviting his friends, Shafiq Rasul (Riz Ahmed), Ruhel Ahmed (Farhel Arun) and young Monir, along later to celebrate with him. Once they are all together in Lahore, the four of them wander into a mosque where an imam talks of the dire consequences should Afghanistan be attacked. The young men decide, pretty well on the spur of the moment, it seems, to go to Afghanistan to see what they can do to help people there. Apparently they are not too bothered about danger, especially as those they ask in Pakistan say there is unlikely to be war. But war there is, and not long after they cross the border (almost losing Shafiq in the process).

This at first seems pretty unconvincing in terms of motivation. But when it emerges later that there is a bit of the ‘Jack the lad’ about these guys, including admission of some fairly serious brushes with the British police, it seems more likely that they would have the necessary devil-may-care attitude to go into a potential war zone. However, their motivation is still not made clear - maybe they cannot give it for all kinds of reasons. Even so, the important question remains: if they are there ‘to help’ Afghanis, what kind of ‘help’ do they envisage being able to give? This is left hanging in the film.

They arrive in Kandahar at the height of US bombing of the city and soon leave for Kabul, where after nearly three weeks they feel they are wasting their time (“not what we came for”), hanging about. Again, this begs some serious questions. If hanging about was “not what we came for”, what did they come for? And just what is the role of the cousin who tags along and also gets arrested and imprisoned? Is he as innocent as he is portrayed? So they try to arrange transport back to Pakistan. Instead, and inexplicably, the four end up in Kunduz just as the Northern Alliance takes it. It seems most peculiar that the minibus-cum-taxi that the three men expect to take them to Pakistan goes in pretty well the opposite direction. Is this something devious that the cousin has planned or is there something the three are not telling us? As they leave with a mass of frantic Taliban fighters, Asif, Ruhel and Shafiq cannot find Monir (who is never seen again and presumed dead) and they are captured by Northern Alliance forces along with the surrendering fighters.

Although it looks at one point that Northern Alliance soldiers are going to butcher everyone they capture, prisoners are in fact taken to Mazar-e-Sharif, where many suffocate after hours in a metal shipping container. Asif is one of the few to survive and is reunited with the other two in Sheberghan Prison, which is grossly overcrowded.

No one admits to being British, as it is seen as risky. So the Tipton trio claim to be from Pakistan. But suddenly in one interrogation session by a US officer, Ruhel says where he is really from and their true origins are discovered. The suddenness of why Ruhel discloses this information about himself and his two friends is not dealt with at all; we are none the wiser as to why he should decide to do this. Next, they are hooded and carted off to Kandahar airbase, which has been turned into a prison. Verbal and physical abuse by US soldiers is constant; all talking and walking is prohibited.

Asif denies to a supposed British officer (later thought to be an American impersonating one) who questions him that he has ever been near the Finsbury Park mosque. Threats to deport their families in England follow.

Camp X-Ray in Guantánamo Bay on the island of Cuba becomes the three young men’s prison. Praying is at first banned and physical stress positions are forced upon everyone, seemingly randomly, with every effort to break the inmates’ spirits. They are allowed five minutes’ walk a week.

Custom-built Camp Delta in Guantánamo follows. They are kept there a year, questioned again and again about the same things and tortured, manacled to a ring in the floor and bombarded with blaring rock music and flashing lights.

Asif, Ruhel and Shafiq remain unbowed, confident that their story cannot be shaken: they were not part of al Qa’eda nor did they fight with the Taliban. They were not part of anything for which they should be imprisoned. But still the questions, maltreatment and imprisonment continue.

When a ‘mistake’ is admitted, it is not done officially, but the Tipton men get better rations and are allowed to watch films. However, when they refuse to collaborate with the Americans they are kept a further three months. Despite each individually refusing to sign anything linking them to al Qa’eda to save the US forces’ face, the Americans never admit that these men were taken and incarcerated wrongly. Currently, they have been unable to convince a US court to award them damages, but they are pursuing their case elsewhere, including the British courts.

One big, glaring hole in the story is not something that the filmmakers have missed seeing: it is something that is not there to see. It is the fact that there is no working class party in evidence in the midst of war. What was in Afghanistan in vestigial form before the Taliban seems to have been completely rooted out. Only the religious radicals of the Taliban, the reactionaries of the Northern Alliance and the invading Americans are represented, because that is all there is in terms of contending forces.

While these three young men at the centre of this film have suffered - most likely for being in the wrong place at the wrong time - the wider disaster of Afghanistan is that of suffering on a national scale. In the end, of course, as with each state oppressing its working class, and peasantry if it has one, there can be no solution without a working class party. The fact that Afghanistan had the beginnings of such a party, flawed as it certainly was, shows clearly that even in the most difficult social terrain the universality of human liberation can live and fight.

The tragedy is that in Afghanistan its demise has been accompanied by the horrors touched on here.

The road to Guantánamo can be downloaded from the Channel 4 website at www.channel4.com/film/newsfeatures/microsites/G/guantanamo/download.html.

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